You might think that library directors make the best advocates, since no one understands the library’s budget and needs better than they do. But the library director is going to be viewed as self serving when s/he asks the local elected officials for a larger budget. The same is true of any other department head or the staff from these publicly funded institutions. But what if that message is carried by a respected citizen or business owner in the community? Then the elected officials take notice. Do library staff have any role in supporting the institution they love? Of course they do! Citizens who advocate on behalf of the library need to be educated and organized to do effective lobbying. The library director needs to be sure that citizen advocates have the right information about the library’s services, budget, and needs for serving the community.

A proposed bill in Kansas removes the protection of educators against prosecution for sharing so-called “harmful material” in schools. Senate Bill 56 has sparked strong partisanship, and the American Library Association is closely monitoring its progress.

If the bill becomes law, librarians who work with young adult literature, English teachers who teach “controversial” books, including The Red Badge of Courage, To Kill a Mockingbird, and Huckleberry Finn, and sex educators could be subject to a class B misdemeanor charge and, if convicted, serve up to six months in jail.

“I asked myself how children were supposed to get any education without books, especially given that they’d catch up with their teachers really fast,” McDonald said. An avid reader herself, the 36-year-old often shopped for books online, which led to her epiphany about the medium. “It hit me that Haiti’s kids could use digital books,” she said.

Libraries serve thousands of people every day—including you. Have you ever taken a moment to show your appreciation? From February 18th to June 12th, the Love Your Library contest allows library users from all over the world to submit their own letters and videos to show just how much they appreciate the libraries they love.

Grand prize: Based on the best story, a $100 Visa gift card will be given to the winning participant and up to $2,000 in library software and services for his or her favorite library.

Runner-up prize: Selected at random, $25 Visa gift cards will be awarded to 10 runner-ups and a $250 donation given to the libraries they love.

An original manuscript and sketches uncovered in the La Jolla, California, home of Dr. Seuss (Ted Geisel) will be published posthumously as a new picture book by Random House Children’s Books on July 28.

$15 million to subsidize a hockey team. $5 million to sell a public library. It's hard not to connect the dots between the city of Glendale's proposal to sell one of its library branches to Midwestern University for $5 million to its past sports and development deals, namely the $15 million it pays to the Arizona Coyotes each year.

You can read self-help books or call in and ask Dear Sugar about your relationship woes, or you can dig into some literary classics to get your head straight about romance this Valentine’s Day. There are plenty of love lessons hidden inside classic literature...

Twitter’s Direct Message feature recently expanded to include group messaging. This enables the tweeter to easily set up groups and to privately message with up to 20 people at a time, using the usual Twitter messaging features–text, links, images, emojis. Your friends, colleagues, students and other contacts receive notifications that they’ve been added to your groups.

The State Library of New South Wales provided grant funding for library marketing, which let us buy 40,000 cups. Council arts manager Shellie Buckle admitted, “The decision to buy recyclable coffee cups was one of the most difficult work decisions I have had to make. I can spend large sums on ebooks and not blink, but buying something that is not traditionally ‘library’ made me pause.”

Haunted Girl: Esther Cox and the Great Amherst Mystery has been optioned for a film. The book, written by Laurie Glenn Norris and Barbara Thompson, was published by Halifax’s Nimbus Publishing in April 2012.

Anyone can suggest that you read this year's Oscar page to screen books (and you should, because they're all great), but we're here to share with you some books becoming movies this year that we think have Oscar written all over them....

If you own an e-reader you often can only buy e-books from the bookstore that is bundled on your device. Many of the budget e-readers out there don’t even have a bookstore that is accessible by users and many people are left to fend for themselves to load content on it.

Here is a comprehensive free e-book resource catalog online. All of these books are hardware agnostic, which means they are not locked by DRM (Digital Rights Management). All you have to do is simply download a title and load in via the USB cable from your computer to your e-reader. Many of these sites also provide the books in more than one format, so they will work with your Amazon Kindle, Kobo, Barnes and Noble Nook, Sony e-reader and hundreds of others.

“I have never read a book like this before,” Oprah says about Ruby, Cynthia Bond’s haunting debut novel. Watch the video to find out why the latest selection for Oprah's Book Club 2.0 will wow you too.

The endless mobile keyboard debate: physical versus digital. BlackBerry advocates and other old-school tech geeks swear by one while literally everyone else has moved on to the other. Tactus Technology thinks there's no reason why we can't have both—in the very same device. Physical keyboards that magically raise out of an otherwise flat screen are a dream the company has had for years, and they're finally ready to sell you on it.

Sharing your scoops to your social media accounts is a must to distribute your curated content. Not only will it drive traffic and leads through your content, but it will help show your expertise with your followers.

Integrating your curated content to your website or blog will allow you to increase your website visitors’ engagement, boost SEO and acquire new visitors. By redirecting your social media traffic to your website, Scoop.it will also help you generate more qualified traffic and leads from your curation work.

Distributing your curated content through a newsletter is a great way to nurture and engage your email subscribers will developing your traffic and visibility.
Creating engaging newsletters with your curated content is really easy.